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M ATC H E S: A L IGHT B O OK
Praise for Matches

“The vision of history illuminating these pages is not

the conventional one of progress, but the much more
radical one of Rousseauism: a ‘left-wing nostalgia’ that
performs a detour through the past—a world anterior to
privilege and hypocrisy—with the aim not of restoring
it, but of giving it a radically new form.”
—Michael Löwy, Le Monde diplomatique

“There are books that have the ability to throw your

whole life into question, but these are the terms of
engagement.... In the weeks I spent reading Matches I
was more jittery than usual, my mind constantly reeling.
I felt like I was on the edge of something, though I could
not tell what that might be. I am always behaving badly,
but this was different. I wanted to quarrel, I needed to
question everything. Books seemed to be ruining my
life.... But I love changing my mind.”
—Anna Zalokostas, Full Stop

“A truly thorough examination of Matches: A Light Book

would map all the terrain and take an unusual form: a
multi-week course containing lectures, slides, video, the-
atre, playtime, and interactivity. S. D. Chrostowska is a
writer of importance, and with this work she has raised
her own personal bar.”
—Jeff Bursey, Numéro Cinq
“As in the writings of Nietzsche and Adorno, the targets
of Chrostowska’s illuminating arson are cultural: the
art world, publishing, academia, popular media, political
economy, and the various phenomena that are the warp
and woof of our daily newsfeeds.... At more than 500
pages, Matches is an epic of the little form. Encyclopedic
in its range and ambition, it includes nearly every variant
on the aphorism attempted since the Corpus Hippo-
craticum. The book puts itself in dialogue with its most
important practitioners as well as with today’s thinkers.”
—Ryan Ruby, Lapham’s Quarterly

“Matches poses its greatest challenge to academic criti-

cism, demonstrating that intellectually rigorous issues
can be addressed in an accessible way without diluting
or oversimplifying those issues....Certainly Matches
demonstrates that an intelligent, informed critic can
use the aphorism and the fragment to explore the
most serious and substantive critical and philosophical
subjects, providing sufficiently radiant illumination to
guide us in our own consideration of these subjects. It is
a very rewarding book, read either in sequence and in its
entirety or in isolated selections, but ... it is less a specific
model of what criticism might become in the digital
age than simply a challenge to seriously reflect on what
Matthew Arnold called ‘the function of criticism at the
present time.’”
—Daniel Green, Los Angeles Review of Books
Before you start to read this book,
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Fig. 1. Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools (1490-1500)

MATCHES: A LIGHT BOOK
© 2015, 2019 S. D. Chrostowska

This work carries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0

International license, which means that you are free to copy and redistrib-
ute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix,
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First edition 2015

Second edition published in 2019 by
punctum books
Earth, Milky Way
http://punctumbooks.com

A number of the pieces in this volume have previously appeared in The

Review of Contemporary Fiction, Convolution, 3:AM, BOMB, and Off the Books.

ISBN-13: 978-1-950192-21-2 (print)

ISBN-13: 978-1-950192-22-9 (ePDF)

DOI: 10.21983/P3.251.1.00

LCCN: 2019937768
Library of Congress Cataloging Data is available from the Library of
Congress

Cover and interior images:

“Strike,” design by Schneck & Zweigbergk, HAY.
With the striking surface moved from the side to the front, “Strike”
matchboxes honour the activity of making a flame.
The common matchbox and book have long been used for advertising,
including of literature: though rarely, they have borne poems, short fiction,
and reproductions of book covers. Putting “Strike” matchboxes on the
cover of this book seconds their tribute to flame-making and acknowledges
the small and unlikely role matches have played in promoting books.

Cover and book design: Chris Piuma.

MATCHES
A LIGHT BOOK

S. D. CHROSTOWSKA
 CON T E N T S

xvii Foreword: Infernal Unity by Alexander Kluge

xxv Proem

1 Book I

Ethics of Reading · Ethics of Reading ·

Who Spits Farther · Called Literature ·
No Other Gods · Last Words · Burial Site ·
Unembarrassable · Broken Levees ·
The Good, the Bad, and the Beyond ·
Novel Experiments · Stranger than Fiction ·
Prise d’abyme · No Outstanding Work · Outpatients ·
Poetry of Genocide · Art / Barbarism · Under Attack ·
Page from the History of Cultural Warfare ·
Art, Alienation, Extinction · Down and Dirty ·
Scenes of Abduction · Coming Clean ·
Red Is the Colour of Attention · Ur-Colour ·
Art (Theory) Brut · Withdrawing ·
Et remotissima prope · Marmi finti ·
Unvarnished · It’s Alive! · Virtual Promiscuity ·
This Will Kill That · Return of the Image ·
What Did You Do in the Theatre? ·
The Mask-Produced Spectator; or, Drowning in the Theatre ·
Fatal Attraction · Pentimenti · Great Passion ·
Instrument of Instruments · Eupsychian ·
Mirabile scriptu · Genius and Truth ·
The Making Of · Look No Further · Work of Exception ·
Stranger in One’s Own Work · Abyss-Gazing ·
Little Pieces · Beasts for Kicks · Cannonball ·
Art Curation · Moratorium I · No Trespassing ·
Rubens in Furs · Fake Fires · Inscrutable Relation ·
Barbarogenesis · Perfect State · Letting Slide ·
Great Art Belonging to Everyone · De-Colonizing Art
67 Book II

No Outside · Proof (in the Recipe) · Dry Run ·

From the Thinking Hat · A Kind of Illusionism ·
Three Clear Thoughts · Impressions · The Clarity of Clouds ·
Found Ideas · Finish Your Thought! · Think for Yourself . . . ·
Overheard · Proverbial Philosophy · Robust Arguments ·
Tyranny of Knowledge · Take My Word for It ·
Philosophizing without a Hammer · Settling Ignorance ·
The Umbrella of Unknowing · Professing Ignorance ·
Smarter and Dumber · Can Speak, Will Travel · Mark My Words ·
Almost Being · Don’t Imagine . . . · Think, Pig! ·
Thinking Thinking · New Line of Thought · The Thinking Head ·
Self-Inquisition · Phases of Power · One Leg in Paradise ·
False Analogues · Unconvinced · Humble Pie · Prison Yard ·
A Sublime Mind · Threaded · Vita contemplativa · Beheading Games ·
Scattered · Hoping for Queequeg? · Crime Is a Failure of Society ·
The Problem · How Playful! · Bodenlos · The Ineffable ·
Perish the Thought · Thinking in Tongues · Sancta simplicitas ·
Encyclops · Outline of a Shadow · Chicken Fence · Tripwire ·
Seeing the Light · Seek and Hide · Merveille du jour ·
Whose Time Has Not yet Come · On Time · Punctum ·
The Time Is Now · Time Out · House Arrest ·
Of “Saints” and “Miracles” of Reason · Furnished Rooms ·
Introspection · Sick · Family Business ·
Central Tenet of Modern Philosophy · Terms of Engagement ·
Notions · Babbling Brook · Not Taken Lightly · Freethinking ·
Casual Philosopher · Sides · Short Spam · Caecigenus ·
Pursuit of Ignorance · Amor vincit? · No Drinking at the Source ·
Critique as a Virtue · After Critique · Anchors and Switches ·
After Truth · Truth to Go · Gymnosophy · Consolation Prize ·
Modifications · Know Thyself · P4E (Philosophy for Embryos) ·
Peekaboo · Done In? · Brain-Machine · Ghost Machine ·
Sex Life of Tools · Criterion of Truth · The Beauty of Wildlife ·
Extremities · Family of Man · O Humanity! · A Deadly Presence ·
When Autumn Leaves · A Big If · A Mote in a Sunbeam ·
Keyhole · Crowded Fields · Memory Viewed · Fragility of Forgetting ·
Shaking the Tree of Knowledge · Changing Taxonomies ·
Go-Between · Fragments of a Hole · Mosaic · No Philosopher ·
Flypaper · The Flies · Most True · Small Talk · [Untitled]
163 Book III

The Impossible Handshake · Verblendungszusammenhang ·

Politics and Truth-Power · New in States · Sua cuique persona ·
What Words Could · Privacy Settings · Snowdown ·
Noisemakers · Sleeper Cells · Private the New Public ·
Letting It All Hang Out · Naming Contest ·
Wanted: Amanuensis · Dictationship · Do As You’re Told ·
Intramurale · Daisy Chains · Doing Time · Habeas corpus ·
A Tale of Two Bodies · White on Black · Concrete Is Hard ·
Torn-Country Experts · Two-Way Terror ·
Uncanny Valentines · Apocalyptic Anti-Apocalypticism ·
Allegory of Politics · “Murderous Alphabet” · Friendly Fire ·
Rarae aves · The Seeing Eye · The Seven Years’ War Again ·
Origin of Revolution · Free Radicals · Nothing Doing ·
Hope Salve · Body Politics · #OtherwiseOccupied ·
“I’m not crying, I’ve just got some #CUPE3903 in my eye” ·
All Is Not Quiet · Arms · Last Man Dying ·
Customary Hail of Arrows · “In search of weapons and allies” ·
Armed to the Teeth · Made with Pride · Garden of Creativity ·
♫ Imagine there’s . . . ♫ · Bromides · So-So · Night Watch ·
Nostalgia for the Middle Class · If the Shoes Fits · Mutual Parodies ·
The Gulf of Inattention · Clay Pigeon · Lying in State ·
Up the Ladder to the Roof · Holes in a Wall · Humility Itself ·
Excellence Clusters · Mottos for Morale · Feminist Taunt ·
Let Me See Your Report Card · Cliché Alert · Touché ·
Lose No Touch · Fetch! Now Roll Over! · Distimacies ·
The End of Sharing? · Mice · Damned to Fame ·
Escaping Criticism · Remember Me! · Writing-Ball ·
Talking Pencil · Doggedly Smart · The Story of Your Life ·
Poor in Spirit, Rich in Irony · Desk Jobs · No Go Stop ·
Subtle Reversal · Pretty Penny; or, Get Rich at All Cost ·
Fruit of Capital · Name Your Price · Make Me an Offer ·
Price of Life · Piss-Poor · American Poverty · Captives ·
Against the Grain · Breaking Even · Loose Change · Poison Ivy ·
Ad coelum et ad nihilum · Nail Soup · Of Wolves and Gatsbies ·
Piggy Bank · Worker Bee ·Tan Lines · The Eyes of the Poor ·
Engels and Marx at Chetham’s Library · Bottoms Up! ·
Call out All the Names under the Sun · Soft Landing ·
Uncomfortable Happiness · Sore Spots · [Untitled] · [Untitled]
251 Book IV

Multitasking · Practically History · Farniente · Fingers Crossed ·

Mutatio mundi · Dip Sheep · Heart & Home · What’s What ·
Beggar Thy Neighbour’s Culture · Far Away, So Close ·
Pebbles · Born Idealist · Future Optimists · Future Humblebrag ·
Priceless · Critical Utopia · Missing Part · All or Nothing ·
Paeninsula fortunatorum · In the Dark · Impossible but Necessary ·
Great Expectations · Means without End · Getting Horizontal ·
Resentment · In Bad Company · Family Pet · A Parting Gift ·
Exuviae · Single-Minded Pursuits · Classified ·
Double Standards · Arcadius Makes Headlines · Beauty & Death ·
Hit and Miss · The Average American · Insulation ·
What You Want Is What You Get · Moratorium II · Rip-Off ·
Meterocracy · A Wide Selection · Outside the Text ·
Doubling Standard · The Candid Philosopher · Colla et labora ·
Ghosting Oneself · Publish and Perish? ·
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Nazis
but Were Too Lazy to Find Out · Uncontaminated ·
Wiggle Room; or, the Unhappy Customer · Token of Value ·
Life of a Writer · Literary Public Execution · Public Service ·
Vital Injection · Complete Sentences · Essential Killing ·
Completists · Happy Day · Once a Wolf, Always a Wolf? ·
On a Roll · Nodding Acquaintance · Black Leather ·
Counterproductive · Ripple Effect · Sleepless · Almost ·
At the Concession Stand · Discount on Top · “Friends for Life” ·
Amicitia aequalitas · Safety Deposits · Sexual Root of Kleptomania ·
Una harum ultima · On Edge · Pale as Death · Moored ·
Angel of Death · À la chienlit! · Pierre Tombale ·
The Origins of Work · Apply Within · Among the Living ·
No Posthumous Reproach · Wound Man ·
The Jargon of Inauthenticity · Wild Oats · Todesliebe ·
Between Stiff and Statue · Love & Love-Sickness ·
Incipit vita nova · Not a Peep from You · Sex & Democracy ·
Making Conversation · Romeos · Scale Models · To Scale ·
Unrecognized · The Takeaway Point · Reminder: Originals ·
Confession of a Knife-Swallower · You Can Take the Clown out of
the Circus, but You Can’t Take the Circus out of the Clown ·
Cannibal on the Make · Soylent Green · Cities of God ·
Sand-Glass · The Man in the Street · Thoroughly Unthorough ·
Rise to the Occasion · Comedown · Iron-y · Choosing Gentleness ·
The Sacred Heart of Convicts · Misericords
339 Book V

Better than Nothing · Greek Gift · Devotio moderna ·

Overripe · Hortus conclusus · Bad Apples ·
Call of the Wild · Speak for Yourself! · Falls the Shadow ·
Campanology · Death Being Our Final Act · Somewhere ·
“Universal Solvent” · Surprised by Death · Sainte Supplice ·
“The moral earth, too, is round!” · A Whole in a Mole ·
In saecula saeculorum · Sola · Skill Rewarded · Blunt Euphemism ·
At the Limit: A Medley · A Fate Worse than Fate · In the Oratory ·
Taken for a Ride · Laudator temporis acti · Wish Experience ·
Courage and Its Crop · Save the Date · Pied Pipers · Hitler Today ·
The True Believer · Uncannied · Departures · Dead Heroes ·
Heroes and Saints · Church Grotesque · Praying That They Last ·
Changing of the Guard · Repetition · Excuses, Excuses ·
History of Survival · What the Future Withholds ·
Event List · Digging Up the Past · Historian as Folk-Hero ·
Lower Down & Around the Corner · Blast from the Past ·
Romancing the Past · Gnomes · Ante-Bellum ·
Our Hour of Need · Standing Room Only · Profanum ·
Sticks and Stones · All of a Heap · Ends · Time Travel ·
World History 101 · A Healthy Stool? · Puer perennis ·
Spot the Difference · The Eyes of History · For Want of a Nail ·
Cannon-Fodder · Our Towton · About Time · Make It Count ·
Old Debts · The World Republic of Ends? · Godsend · Eat Me! ·
I’m Not Playing · Material Cultures · Consignment Shop · Inside Job ·
From the Gift Shop · “The younger, the more clear-sighted” ·
Where Do We Stand? · Shared Horizon · Myth of Modernity ·
Futurity by the Stars · Clarification of Time · Fidgety Sitters ·
Bespeculations · Faster! Faster! · You Can Say That Again ·
Prospecting · Salve! · So Long! · Unrecognized Twin ·
Nostalgic Appreciation · Faulty History · Le Temps perdu ·
Levelling with Time · Zerkalo · Tired Question · The Mark of Kings ·
Out of Torn Cloth · Thieves in the Night · World History in Reverse ·
Whiplash · Latecomers · Bidding Is Now Closed ·
Sapiens sapiens, or Nil admirari · Viva voce · Lost & Found ·
God Might be the Word, but the Devil Is Still the Tongue ·
Return of Desire · Attention! · Nihil obstat · Carpe noctem ·
Thick Skin · Circulus donationis · Take It Back · Do Not Open ·
Why I Made Fun of Holy Water · God Question ·
Comparing “Apples” · Default Inheritance · Disputed Inheritance
435 Paralipomena

The Cunning of Folly · Running with It · Hikers and Runners ·

Crooked Timber · Facing Out · Portraits · Browbeaten ·
Life of Zilch · Spilling Your Beans · Making up Lives ·
Literary Effects · Working with Dreams · Fast Asleep ·
Dug Up · Law of Transformation · Quantity over Quality ·
Taking In, Letting Go · What Are the Chances? ·
Unbound . . . · Out of Print · “A Book”? · Moratorium III ·
Before You Put Pen to Paper · Lapidary · An Aphorism ·
“Uncombed Thoughts” · Held to Account · Juggling ·
More Is Less? · Chain Reaction · Culture Vultures ·
Culture Vultures · Hypocritics · A Common Cause ·
The Democratic Challenge · Free Ride · Not to Be Outdone ·
Invisible Tree · Late Spring, Late Summer · No Qualms ·
Got a Light? · Obscurantism · Misfired Insult ·
The Cynic’s Matchbox (That’s the Spirit!) · Illuminosity ·
Light Touch · Seeing Darkness · Safety Matches ·
Matches to Ashes · Book Advertising · Little A ·
Long Distance · Legacy of Modernism · First Things First ·
Correspondence · Writing For · Dead Letters ·
Envelope Stuffing · Diminishing Returns · Dashed Off ·
Other People’s Mail · News of Oneself · True Taste ·
Soho! · At the Stalls · Why I’m Not a Book Addict ·
What Are Shelves For · Will-o’-the-Wisp ·
“I am loath even to have thoughts I cannot publish” ·
Grasping Criticism · Mushy Criticism ·
Criticism as Self-Examination · Murine Criticism ·
The Draft · Around the Block · Keeping Up with the Joneses ·
On the Rails · Zoning In · The Easygoing Work ·
The Easy Part · Succès d’estime · Double-Check ·
Out Like a Light · Bridge of Boats · The Author’s Two Bodies ·
Inside the Tomb · “Come, my cold and stiff companion!” ·
Safer Bet · Leaving One’s Mark · Literary Sensation ·
High and Low · Castoffs · Claqueurs · No-Power ·
Public Intellectual · Following Leaders · Leading Motives ·
Easy Pickings (A Lamb Is a Lamb) · Decoration ·
Common, senses of · Madness in Literature · Ouroborous ·
In the Tower · Experimentalism · Paradoxes of Experimentalism ·
Tapped Potential · Magpies · Error Spotters · Scribes ·
Inkhorn · Wordsmith · Feathers · Coincidence of Invention ·
Philobiblon · Arks Out · Jazz Funeral · Fans · Copycats ·
Non-Potable · Seniority · “My Undertaking” ·
A Nagging Burden · Loose Moorings · Credo ·
The Burning Book · Out of Reach · Endings
 FOR E WOR D
I N F E R N A L U N IT Y

Alexander Kluge

In spitzen Klammern
die verbrannten Wörter

In pointed brackets
The burned words
—Heiner Müller, “Mommsen’s Block”

In a letter from August 2, 1935, written in Hornberg, in the

Black Forest, and sent to Walter Benjamin, then living in
Paris, Theodor W. Adorno makes a series of remarks on a
line by Michelet, “Every epoch dreams the one that follows
it.” These remarks are part of a complex designated by the
keywords: prehistory of the nineteenth century; dialectical
image; myth and modernity.
The fetish character of merchandise is not a fact of
consciousness, writes Adorno. Rather, it is dialectical, in the
crucial sense of producing consciousness. That is, conscious-
ness or the unconscious cannot simply reproduce this fetish
character as a dream. On the contrary, consciousness or the
unconscious disintegrates vis-à-vis commodity fetishism into
desire and anxiety—without, however, ever becoming a new
whole. In this sense, Adorno argues, immanent conscious-
ness is itself “a constellation of the real,” “just as if it were the
astronomical phase in which hell moves among mankind.
Only the star-chart of such wanderings could, it seems to
me, open a perspective on history as prehistory.” Not only
xvii
xviii s. d. chro stowska

can entire epochs not dream those that follow them, since
epochs as a whole probably cannot dream, but individual
consciousness or the individual unconscious, which is per-
fectly capable of dreaming, cannot, through such dreaming,
realize or animate dialectical constructions. The dream,
then, to the degree that consciousness is capable of catching
it, does not extend into the lurid current of history’s flow,
where it too would be torn and destroyed.
Adorno speaks also in this context of the dialectical
image’s “objective power of the keys,”* instead of a
subjective-objective power. He moreover stresses the obverse
of the utopian dialectical image of the nineteenth century
as hell. There is nothing that possesses the “power of the
keys” to access utopia that is not at the same time capable of
unlocking hell…
It is this Adornian conception that comes through in
Matches—a title evoking the conflict between ideas and
the intensity of their confrontation. But such a book is not,
for all that, a battlefield delivered over to chaos; the troops
remain in formation at their post: aphorisms, pensées, epi-
grams, fictional dialogues, apologues, short essays, ordered
in six parts: aesthetics and literature; philosophy, science,
and technology; politics; society; history, ethics, and reli-
gion; literary culture, the writer’s vocation, and method.
Undergirding the project is an encyclopedic ambition—a
subjective encyclopedia, to be sure, pretending in no way to
be exhaustive. It is more a question of highlighting elements
essential for understanding our historical moment, which
are grasped in their contradictory, conflictual, differential, as
well as complementary relationships. The result is a complex
that wears its solid erudition lightly, one that puts particular
emphasis on thinkers exemplifying the genre of the apho-
rism, such as Gracián, Chamfort, Lichtenberg, Nietzsche,
or Jünger. Despite sorting its fragments into several books,
Matches is an idiosyncratic universe, open and multiform,
without an overarching principle. A “constellation of the

* Theological notion expressing the apostolic power to bind or loose sins.—Trans.

 m at ch es : a l ig ht b o ok xix

real,” to borrow Adorno’s expression, and pervaded by its

“infernal unity.”
Among the book’s thematic nuclei one can mention the
relationships between humans, animals, and machines;
work, class relations and inequalities; truth and survival;
the vagaries of creativity; the uncanny encounters between
art and barbarism. Most important, however, is the idea
of history understood not as progress but as a narrative
thread kept taut by nostalgic longing and utopian expecta-
tions— stretched between, on the one hand, the resources of
freedom and happiness lived in the past, and, on the other
hand, the dream of building a better world, upon the ashes of
mounting catastrophe.
To take up the words of Miguel Abensour, “Man is a uto-
pian animal,” and, as Ernst Bloch wrote in The Principle of
Hope, “There is the spirit of utopia in the final predicate of
every great statement.” This implicit aspiration to something
that has not yet come is everywhere joined in Matches to an
explicit exercise of the critical faculty. One way to read the
collection is as a kind of humanist manifesto calling on us to
transform raw information into knowledge and communi-
cable experience. The content here corresponds completely
to the form: contemporary subjectivity, on account of its
incredible fragmentation, can only be criticized and gathered
up in fragmentary form.
Far from being dogmatic and prescriptive, Matches asks us
not to renounce the commitment to thinking in a reality that
threatens to overwhelm reason at any moment and to radi-
cally reduce the range of human feeling and sensation. Every
page offers the reader an opportunity to interrogate and
bring to light their own personal experience. In a style that is
at once dense and incisive yet not without humour and irony,
the author’s observations describe the contours of the world
not just as it is, but above all as it should not be. It is thinking
that resists the disjointedness of the world; thinking that
tries to establish internal resonances where being and things
continually fall apart and drift away from one another,
despite their confinement on the same earthly vessel. This
xx s. d. chro stowska

thinking is itself necessarily composed of fragments of pro-

test and resistance sharp like the shards of glass.
It is owing to these aspects that the French translation of
Matches took its place alongside other fragmentary philo-
sophical works—for example, The Heritage of Our Times by
Ernst Bloch and Dämmerung: Notizen in Deutschland (Twi-
light: Notes from Germany) by Max Horkheimer—in the
series “Critique de la politique.”* Since 1974, the series has
prized unconventional voices and positions, and its editor,
the late Miguel Abensour (1939–2017), went out of his way to
include prose transcending academic specialization. This was
prose from elsewhere, offered in translation, that could count
on the hospitality of French intellectuals. In this respect,
Chrostowska’s book is situated on the margins of contem-
porary theoretical and critical writing in the Anglophone
world, both inside and outside of the academy. The negative
dialectics of Adorno —to always advance toward the limits
of knowledge —is here coupled with the negative capability
described by John Keats, which consists in letting go of the
persistent search for the reason of things. When exercising
the power of a critic as well as that of a creator, we are bound
for uncertainty and destined to fail in taming truth. If we
nonetheless pursue it beyond the established order and our
own theoretical capacities and into the wilderness of art, in
its ever-renewed world, it is thanks to a daimon that does
not tell us what to do, or what to say, but that preserves us
from error. The periodic renewal of fragmentary forms—like
of utopias— belongs to epochs in search of a higher unity
beyond apparent complexities; to times of agitation apt to
scramble the moral and political compass and to focalize
critical commentary on crisis.
The publication of a 500-page book of fragments in the
United States has every right to baffle some. After all, are
there not already enough fragments all around us: in books

* Reference is to the book series formerly at Payot-Rivages, now at Klincksieck,

edited until 2017 by Miguel Abensour. This preface first appeared in the French
translation of Matches.—Trans.
 m at ch es : a l ig ht b o ok xxi

that will never be read again cover to cover or in mildly

amusing messages posted on social media in seemingly
limitless quantities? Settling for the dispersal that affects
digital archives, which are increasingly accessed at random
and without any context, or for the ephemerality of what is
written on the spur of the moment and on the fly, inevitably
severs the ties to the critical mind in action, distinguished
by its demanding nature, passion, and imagination— qual-
ities without which the intellectual world threatens to
disintegrate.
The imagination is a skittish animal. But just as a skittish
horse can be brought to attack, to rush ahead, and charges
forward so spontaneously that no rider can hold back the
animal’s mass (and, a-squat atop the horse, he has to work
hard not to get bucked off), so the imagination flies towards
all the mountains of reality and storms its walls with its
ladders and bundles of fire, as Theodor Fontane described it.
No, the imagination is not fit for a system like Wikipedia. It
does not care much for coherence, context, and facts. It is a
political animal and falls upon the world like a swarm.
It also possesses innumerable sources, including subter-
ranean ones, sparse and barren; its fountains spring forth
destroying everything in their vicinity. According to Adorno,
the most important factory of the imagination is sorrow. The
imagination is born of an injury denied by fantasies. I have to
disagree with him. I know of fantasies set in motion by luxury
and elation. They compete with those that serve self-defence.
The main thing is to pass through the “infernal unity” of the
world, through this bad totality, to arrive at the threshold
from which the horizon of the future can be glimpsed.
I suppose, Sirs, that you are so glutted with this banquet of
various literary dishes that the food you eat continues to rise.
Indeed ye sit crammed with dainties, for many have served
up to you a mixed feast of precious and varied discourse
and persuade you to look with contempt on ordinary fare.
What shall I do now? Shall I allow what I had prepared to
lie uneaten and spoil, or shall I expose it in the middle of
the market for sale to retail dealers at any price it will fetch?
Who in that case will want any part of my wares or who
would give twopence for my writings, unless his ears were
stopped up?
— Agathias, 6th century C. E.

Why offer them a whole? They’ll just fragment

It anyway, the public always do.
— Director to Poet, Goethe, Faust, Part I, 1798

I have seen it with my own eyes: natures that are gifted,

rich, and disposed to be free, already “ruined by reading”
in their thirties, just matches that have to be struck to emit
sparks— “thoughts.”
— Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 1888
 PROE M

I had a vision of a book that shed light. A torch book to light

my way. A comet book, its luminous tail to leave a trace for
me. Its brightness so intense that closing it submerged who-
ever broke it open in deeper darkness than before. I fancied a
kind of sempiternal flame that shot up again as one resumed
where one had left off.
It seemed to me there are two basic kinds of book, differ-
ing in radiance. One in which the words, erect, line up in
columns and salute from every page, and another with words
laid down in rows, looking up from their cots, sometimes
wide, most only half, awake. The words are matches; those
that strike ignite. From time to time, light sweeps across the
page like wildfire. But most times, as with damp equipment,
nothing so spectacular can be expected.
The match: little stick tipped with combustible stuff,
sparked by friction; typically comes in a book or a box or
a bundle (the point being: never alone). The highly porta-
ble match lighting more or less when required was a great
nineteenth-century innovation. Before, we had only Danger
and Poison matches, and countless match-induced accidents
and suicides.
We still have not engineered mischief out of the match.
One little lucifer, God’s little helper, lit in the company of its
sisters and brothers will, if we let them, afford us a min-
iature inferno. Are we responsible for the recklessness of
thought? There will always be match tricks to go very wrong.
How many times have we amused ourselves in the school-
yard, lighting up the whole passel of ideas within our reach,
getting us in trouble? And now that we are older, we can
xxv
xxvi s. d. chro stowska

strike anywhere. We count on sparks to leap long distances

virtually, to pass most swiftly from point to point instead
of smouldering. No sooner do we bring a flame to some-
thing flammable than it spreads— even as its conductors are
already charring and curling up. Let us congratulate our-
selves for remaking the transport of ideas. And for this new
refrain: What matters is what’s on fire.
Lumenophiles! These are fragile thoughts. Be gentle with
them. In a drafty space they might need your sheltering
hand. Your sighs will extinguish them. Blow instead, blow
hard, on the embers they leave behind. And never forget what
they are: a little “gift” our ancestors received in curiosity and
paid dearly for (being no match for a certain black “box”): evil
and misery spilled out and flooded us. In that pagan tale, too,
we reached for divine light and brought down darkness in its
wake.
From this living tragicomedy we conclude that the mind
was meant to be set ablaze, though not necessarily to survive
the heat. Who will keep the ash-heaps of history raked
and illuminated? Burn we must with desire to outmatch
what consumes us, burning questions and objections. But
what will come of our burnt offerings, our victory torches,
our combustions and electrifications, we never know in
advance. In hindsight much light was wasted, and much evil
never did bring forth any good. So let’s also not fetishize
the tools of light—these “matches” in a book or a box. The
burnt-out match looks so uncannily human, and wise to this
resemblance.
Incorrigible pyrotechnicians! It won’t be all fireworks!
Which one of you doesn’t utter a cliché now and again, if
only for reassurance at a particularly obscure spot concern-
ing the existence of common sense? The platitude, that
ever-reliable native intelligence that so often, apparently
by chance, opens the darkroom door just when bold new
thoughts are developing and ruins everything! I am sure
I backed away from many such cheerless corners worried
by what crud of shabby, light-shy eccentricity I might find
there —proceeding rather by analogies, muddled circumlocu-
tions, and yes, by common-places.
 m at ch es : a l ig ht b o ok xxvii

Now you know, and in your leniency will observe how little
customary it is for platitudes, the smoke of opinion, to be
keeping such otherwise lustrous company. This is their big
moment to stand out and fall flat (as they must). And your
opportunity to take note of them, perhaps even own up to
some nodding weakness. So stay sharp, order a wake-up call
if need be. Any banality you come across promise to strike
against the sole of your shoe, and, with a cool head, stomp
out its sooty flicker.
Above all, harbour no illusions about instant illumination.
But perhaps you hope to warm yourself a little . . .Then you
have not understood Andersen’s wise tale. Either that or you
haven’t read it. Ideas, visions alone won’t keep you warm;
it’s what you do with them. Have you ever in your life seen a
bonfire of matches? Then you should know they were made
neither to raise temperatures nor to dazzle. What’s this I
hear about obsolescence? You don’t know what to do? A vir-
tual flame is not hazard-free; how much truer is this of a real
one! But safety talk would be out of place here. You’ll learn
by playing how best to play.

Allumette, gentille allumette,

Allumette, je te gratterai.
Je te gratterai la tête.
Je te gratterai la tête.
Et la tête! Et la tête!

In any event, your expectations need scaling down. There

isn’t all that much to be done with matches. On the bright
side, you still have your choice of “effect”: lighting them
as needed, one at a time, or seeing them go up in smoke,
all in one go. Now ask me about the advantages to each
approach . . .Why, that is just the moral of The Hothead and
the Slow Burn (an ultramodern fable you are forgiven for not
knowing). Which of the two is you?
I made this book of matches for the cold-stiff and the
light-poor, with their survival at heart. Can they keep the fire
going in their bellies, assuming they lit one? Without it, they
won’t last the night. Should my matchbook, however, fall
xxviii s. d. chro stowska

into the hands of hot-blooded pyromaniacs who, having gone

through it and finding it “light,” cast it empty into the fur-
nace of their mind, then I will fan the flames myself. What
better honour than to be eaten by a brighter blaze, turn fuel
for that afflatus of genius, meanwhile discreetly eliminating
its stench?
You may have already guessed that putting together such
a book required no small ingenuity on the part of one who
is no match-maker by trade. What do I know about mixing
phosphorus or sulphur with whatever else goes into the head
of a match? Never mind the effort, not entirely successful,
to leave familiar thoughts and places, where one’s ideas fall
short or turn out to be squibs. Habits took offence, reasons
had to be improvised, so too credible excuses. But off one
went. And here one is: whittling then dabbing the service-
able sticks with stuff pulled from elsewhere, doing this from
sunup till sundown, into night as deep as before there was
light.
A mountain retreat is only as good as the view, particularly
at dusk. Can one really see better from here? Does better
mean more, or less? Does it mean farther, or closer? Is it observ-
ing the mist hanging about me, or seeing through the mist?
Is it watching the dance of a flame, or staring into it, at what
feeds it? Is it looking in, or looking out?
Of one thing there is no doubt: it is no more looking up
than looking down. Though I refuse to insert myself into
it—and what would be the point?—I have gathered a thing
or two about life in the valley. Its sounds after all reach
me constantly: motors starting up, kids let out of school,
weekend revels, amplified sermons, the crackle of fireworks,
and, not to discriminate, the lowing of cattle, the chirping
and squawking in the trees . . . I see nothing of it beneath me.
I only have eyes for what stretches on before me. Above all, I
hate being the tourist. So I stay here, and regard best what I
see worst—what I view absently and without consideration.

above São Pedro da Serra, Brasil

April 2014
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us. The Chief and I were at Sandhurst together, don't you know, and
he'd do anything for me. But he's a busy man, a very busy man; and
I always respect a man's business, pull myself up short, don't you
know, wouldn't waste his time or bore him, on any account."
"They haven't much time to spare in this building, sir," assented
Faunce.
"Of course not. Magnificent building—splendid institution—fine body
of men the police—but there ought to be three times as many of 'em.
Eh, Faunce, that's your opinion, ain't it?"
"No doubt, sir, there ought to be more of them, if it would run to it."
"But it won't, no, of course it won't. Another penny on the income-tax
this year! We shall see it a shilling before we've done with it."
"We should see it half a crown, sir, if everything was done as it ought
to be done."
"True, true, Faunce. A social Utopia, and the taxpayer with hardly
bread to eat. Well, I want to take you straight to my mother-in-law,
who will tell you all about her worthless son—a bad egg, Faunce, a
bitter bad egg, and not worth a ha'porth of the anxiety that poor old
lady has been feeling about him. She lives at Buckingham Gate.
Shall we walk?"
"By all means, sir. May I ask what particular circumstances have
caused this uneasiness on Mrs. Rannock's part—and from what
period her anxiety dates?"
"Well, you see, Faunce, Rannock left England in March—late in
March—to go to Klondyke—a wild-cat scheme, like most of his
schemes—and from that day to this nobody who knows him—so far
as we can discover—has received any communication from him."
"Is that so strange, sir? I shouldn't think that when a man was
digging for gold among a few thousand other adventurers, at the risk
of being frozen to death, or murdered if he was lucky, he would be
likely to trouble himself much about family correspondence?"
"Well, no doubt it's a rough-and-tumble life, but still, I'm told they do
get the mails, and do keep somehow in touch with the civilized world;
and, blackguard as Rannock is, he has been in the habit of writing to
his mother three or four times a year, and oftener. I believe there is a
soft spot in his heart for her. But you'll see the old lady, and she'll tell
you her troubles," concluded Major Towgood, "so I needn't say any
more about it."
In spite of which remark he talked without intermission all the way to
Buckingham Gate.

CHAPTER XV.
"Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall
He shall not blind his soul with clay."
The Honourable Mrs. Rannock, widow of Captain Rannock, second
son of Lord Kirkmichael, lived in a narrow-fronted Queen Anne
house facing Wellington Barracks. It was one of the smallest houses
to be found in a fashionable quarter, and the rent was the only thing
big about it; but Mrs. Rannock had lived at Court for the greater part
of her life, having begun as a maid-of-honour when she and her
Royal mistress were young, and she could hardly have existed out of
that rarefied atmosphere. Refinement and elegance were as
necessary to her as air and water are to the common herd; she
would have pined to death in a vulgar neighbourhood; her personal
wants were of the smallest, but her surroundings had to be the
surroundings of a lady.
Everything in the house was perfect of its kind. It was furnished with
family relics, Sheraton and Chippendale furniture that had been
made to order by those famous cabinet-makers for the Rannocks of
the eighteenth century, a buhl cabinet that had come straight from
the Faubourg St. Germain in the Red Terror, when Paris was running
with innocent blood, and the ci-devants were flying from ruin and
death.
The street door was painted sky-blue, the hall and staircase were
white, the rich colouring of the wall-papers made a vivid background
to the sober tones of the old furniture, and in the dainty drawing-
room, with its apple-blossom chintz and exquisite Chelsea china, the
daintiest thing was old Mrs. Rannock, with her pink-and-white
complexion, silvery hair, patrician features and bearing, tall and
slender figure, rich brocade gown, and Honiton cap with lappets that
fell almost to her waist.
She was an ideal old lady, grande dame in every detail. She had
been painted by Hayter and sketched by D'Orsay. The semi-
transparent hand, which lay on the arm of her chair, had been
modelled by sculptors of renown, had been carved in marble and in
ivory, when she was the beautiful Mary Rannock.
She was nearly eighty, and had been a widow for a quarter of a
century, drifting placidly down the river of time, with very few
pleasures and not many friends, having outlived most of them, and
with only one trouble, the wrong-doing of the son she adored.
She had hoped so much for him, had burnt with ambition for him,
had destined him for a high place in the world; and he had forfeited
every friendship, missed every chance, disappointed every hope.
And she loved him still, better than she loved her daughter and her
daughter's children; better, perhaps, because his life had been an
ignominious failure; better because of that boundless compassion
which she felt for his ill-fortune.
"My poor Dick has never had any luck," she would say excusingly.
She received Mr. Faunce with pathetic eagerness, like a drowning
man clutching at the first spar that floats within his reach.
"Pray, be seated," she said graciously. And then, turning to her son-
in-law, she said, "I should like to have my talk with Mr. Faunce quite
alone, Harry," at which Major Towgood bounded from his chair with a
snort of vexation.
"But surely, my dear mother, since I know all the circumstances of
the case, and as a man of the world, I can be of some use."
"Not while I am talking to Mr. Faunce, Harry. I want to keep my poor
old head calm and cool."
"Well, dear, you are the best judge, but really——"
"Dear Harry, it will be so kind of you to leave us alone."
"Well, mother, if that's so——" and the impetuous little Major puffed
and blew himself out of the room, and might have been heard fuming
on the landing, before he went downstairs to console himself with a
cigar in the dining-room.
"My son-in-law is an excellent creature, Mr. Faunce, but he talks too
much," said Mrs. Rannock. "No doubt he has told you something of
the circumstances in which I require your help."
"Yes, madam."
"And now ask me as many questions as you like. I will keep nothing
from you. I am too anxious about my son's fate to have any reserve."
"May I ask, madam, in the first place, what reason you have for
being anxious about Colonel Rannock?"
"His silence is a sufficient reason—his silence of nearly ten months.
My son is a very good correspondent. I don't think he has ever
before left me two months without a letter. He is a very good
correspondent," she repeated earnestly, as if she were saying, "He is
a very good son."
"But have you allowed for the rough life at Klondyke, madam, and
the disinclination that a man feels—in a scene of that kind—to sit
down and write a letter, dead beat, perhaps, after a day's toil?"
"Yes, I have allowed for that, but I cannot believe—if my son were
living"—her eyes filled with irrepressible tears in spite of her struggle
to be calm—"and in his right mind, with power to hold a pen—I
cannot believe that he would so neglect me."
"And you have written to him, I conclude, madam?"
"I have written week after week. I have sent letters to the Post Office
at San Francisco and at Dawson City, where my son told me to
address him—letter after letter."
"Have you communicated with Colonel Rannock's late body-
servant?"
"Chater? Yes, naturally. What do you know of Chater?"
"Very little, madam. I happened to hear of him from a gentleman who
had also been making inquiries about your son."
"For what reason?"
"In Lady Perivale's interest. The gentleman has since married Lady
Perivale."
"Mr. Haldane! Yes, I heard of the marriage. I was glad to hear of it.
Lady Perivale had suffered a great injustice from her likeness to that
wretched woman."
"Pardon me, madam. You know the saying—Cherchez la femme. If
you can tell me anything about that woman, and Colonel Rannock's
relations with her, it may help me in my search for him."
"Oh, it is a sad, sad story. My dear son began life so well, in his
grandfather's regiment. There had been Rannocks in the
Lanarkshire ever since Killicrankie. He was a fine soldier, and
distinguished himself in Afghanistan, and it was only after he made
that wretched woman's acquaintance that he began to go wrong—
seriously wrong. He may have been a little wild even before then, but
not more than many other young men. It was that woman and her
surroundings that ruined him."
"I take it that happened about ten years ago."
"Ten years? Yes. How did you know that?"
"I had occasion to look into Miss Delmaine's past life, madam. Pray
tell me all you can about her."
"It was an infatuation on my son's part. He saw her at the theatre,
where people made a great fuss about her on account of her beauty,
though she was no actress. She had a fine house in St. John's
Wood, at the expense of a young man of large means—whom she
ruined, and who died soon after. My son became a frequent visitor at
the house. There were Sunday dinners, and suppers after the
theatre, and my son was always there, madly in love with Miss
Delmaine. Whether she was more to him than an acquaintance in
those days I cannot say. Certainly he had no quarrel with Sir Hubert
Withernsea. But after that unhappy young man's death Kate
Delmaine's influence upon my son wrecked his career. He left the
Army when the Lanarkshire was ordered to Burmah, rather than
leave her, and not daring to take her with him. I don't know what kind
of life he lived after that, although I saw him from time to time; but I
know he was under a cloud, and there were only a few of his father's
old friends who were civil to him, and asked him to their houses."
"Did you know of Colonel Rannock's courtship of Lady Perivale,
madam?"
"Yes, indeed. It was my earnest hope that he would succeed in it."
"Did you know the lady, and know of her likeness to Miss Delmaine?"
"No. I go very little into society. I am an old woman, and only like to
see old friends. And you must understand that I never saw Miss
Delmaine."
"Do you think your son was in love with Lady Perivale?"
"Yes, I believe he was. Or it may be that he only liked her because of
her resemblance to that woman."
"And was he very angry when she refused him?"
"Yes, I know he was wounded—and even angry."
"Do you think that disappointment, and other troubles, might have
induced him to take his own life?"
"No, no, no; I couldn't believe that for one moment. My son has
faced death too often—has risked his life in a good cause, and would
never throw it away like a coward. I know how brave he is, what a
strong will he has—a will strong enough to overcome difficulties. It
was like him to think of Klondyke when he was ruined."
"Did you know that he was in Algiers with Miss Delmaine last
February?"
"Not till I read the report of Lady Perivale's libel suit. I thought he had
broken with her finally two years ago, and I believe at the time he
had. I need not tell you that I did not obtain my knowledge of that
unhappy connection from my son himself. You will understand a
mother's keen anxiety, and that I had other sources of information."
"Yes, madam, I can understand. I do not think I need give you any
further trouble to-day; but if you will oblige me with your son's
photograph—a recent likeness—it may be of use in this matter."
"Yes, I can give you his photograph, taken last year."
Mrs. Rannock opened a velvet case on the table next her chair, and
the wasted white hands trembled ever so faintly as she took out a
cabinet photograph and gave it to Faunce.
"Thank you, madam. I shall wait upon you again directly I have any
fresh information; but I must warn you that an inquiry of this kind is
apt to be very slow; and I fear you can give me no suggestion as to
where to look for Colonel Rannock in the event of his having
changed his mind and not gone to Klondyke."
"No, no; I cannot think that he would change his mind. He was with
me the day before he started, full of hope and excitement. He was
enthusiastic about the wild life in Alaska, and would not listen to my
fears and objections. Oh! Mr. Faunce, if anything evil has happened
to him, these grey hairs will go down in sorrow to the grave."
Again the uncontrollable tears welled into her eyes. She rose, and
Faunce took the movement as his dismissal.
"You may rely upon my most earnest endeavours, madam," he said,
and quietly withdrew, as she stretched a trembling hand to the bell.
"Poor soul! I'm afraid there must be sorrow for those grey hairs
before we come to the end of the story," mused Faunce, as he
walked back to his rooms.
He wrote to Chater, the valet, asking him to call in Essex Street next
morning on particular business concerning Colonel Rannock; and
the valet appeared, with exact punctuality, neatly clad, with well-
brushed hat and slim umbrella, and a little look about the clean-
shaved chin, broad chest, and close-cut hair, that told Faunce he
had once shouldered arms, and swung round to the "Right turn!" in
the white dust of a barrack-yard.
Chater was eminently a man of the world, very easy to get on with,
when he had heard Faunce's credentials, and knew what was
wanted of him, in Mrs. Rannock's interests. He had been Rannock's
soldier-servant in Afghanistan, and had lived with him between
eleven and twelve years.
"And I think you liked him," said Faunce.
"Yes, sir; I liked my master. He was a devil, but he was the kind of
devil I like."
"And I suppose you knew Miss Delmaine?"
"Couldn't help that, sir. She was a devil, and the kind of devil I don't
like. She was the ruin of my master—blue ruin, Mr. Faunce. He might
have kept inside the ropes but for her."
"Did you know anything of his courtship of Lady Perivale?"
"Of course I did, sir. I had to carry the 'cello backwards and forwards
between the Albany and Grosvenor Square."
"Do you think he cared much for Lady Perivale?"
"Well, I believe he did, in a way. He was cuts with Miss Delmaine just
then. She'd been going on a little too bad. There was a prize-fighter,
a man she'd known from her childhood, that was always after her,
and the Colonel wouldn't stand it. Mind you, I don't believe—to give
the devil his due—she ever cared for the fellow, but I think she liked
making my master jealous. She is that kind of aggravating creature
that knows her power over a man, and can't be happy until she's
made him miserable. And then there were rows, and a regular burst
up, and the Colonel swore he'd never see her again."
"And it was after the quarrel that he courted Lady Perivale?"
"Yes, it was after. He was knocked all of a heap the first time he met
her ladyship, on account of her likeness to Kate. 'She's the loveliest
woman I ever saw since Mrs. Randall was at her best,' he said, for
he was always free with me, having lived under canvas together, and
me nursing him through more than one bout of Indian fever—'and
she's an oof-bird,' he said, 'and I shall be on the pig's back if I marry
her.' And I know he meant to marry her, and tried hard—left off cards
and drink, and cut all the young fools that he used to have hanging
about him, and turned over a new leaf. I'd never known him keep
steady so long since we came from India. But when he found it was
all no go, and Lady Perivale wouldn't have him, he was furious. And
when she went off to Italy in the autumn, he took to the cards again,
and drank harder than ever, and went a mucker one way and
another, and by December he had made it up with Kate, and they
went off to Nice together the week before Christmas, with the
intention of crossing over to Ajaccio."
"Why didn't you go with your master?"
"I had business to do for him in town. He wanted to get rid of his
chambers and furniture, and I had to find a purchaser, and he
wanted it all carried through very quietly, for there was a money-
lender who thought he had a bill of sale on the goods."
"You succeeded in that?"
"Yes; I got him a fair price for his lease and furniture. I would give a
good deal to know where he is, and what became of that money."
"Was it much?"
"Six hundred and forty pounds. Three hundred for the lease, which
had only two years to run, and three hundred and forty for the
furniture, at a valuation."
"Did he take all the money with him when he started for America?"
"No; he paid me half a year's wages, on account of a year and a half
due, and he spent a little on himself, but he had five hundred and
fifty pounds in his pocket-book, in bank-notes, when he left
Waterloo."
"In bank-notes. Do you know the figures?"
"Yes; there were two hundred-pound notes, and four fifties, the rest
tens and fives. I wrote a list of the numbers at his dictation."
"Have you kept that list?"
"I believe I have a copy of it among my papers. I copied the figures,
knowing what a careless beggar the Colonel is, and that he was as
likely as not to lose his list."
"Why did he take the money in bank-notes?"
"He had been told that a cheque-book wouldn't be of much use to
him in San Francisco, and no use at all at Dawson City, where he
would have to buy most of his outfit—furs, and mining tools, and a lot
more."
"What put Klondyke into his head, do you think?"
"A pal of his, a Yankee, was going to try his luck there. My master
was always fond of adventure, and never minded roughing it; so the
scheme took his fancy."
"Chater," said Faunce, in a very earnest voice, "do you think Colonel
Rannock ever got as far as Klondyke?—as far as Dawson City?—as
far as 'Frisco?—as far as New York?"
"God knows, sir! I think the case looks—fishy."
"I have reason to know that he wasn't at 'Frisco in time to start for
Vancouver with the pal you talk of, Mr. Bamford—and that Bamford
and another friend sailed without him."
"I know that, sir. Mr. Haldane, the gentleman who came to me for
information, told me the result of his inquiry."
"And this made you rather uneasy, didn't it, Chater?"
"Well, I didn't like to hear it, Mr. Faunce. But my master is a rum sort.
He might change his mind at the last minute. He might go back to
her."
"He didn't do that, Chater. I can answer for him."
"What do you know about her?"
"A good deal. Was she at Waterloo to see your master off by the
boat-train?"
"Not she! They had one of their quarrels in Paris—and he left her
there to find her way home by herself."
"You say home? Had she any house in London?"
"No, she'd never owned a house since the Abbey Road. She was in
lodgings near Cheyne Walk before she went to Nice."
"Decent lodgings?"
"Oh yes, topping."
"And she didn't show up at the boat-train?"
"He didn't travel by the boat-train. He went the night before—by the
Bournemouth express."
"The four-fifty-five?"
"Yes."
"Was he going to stay in Southampton that night?"
"I suppose so. He didn't tell me what was up. He seemed a bit
excited and put out, and hadn't a word to throw at a dog."
"Did he promise to write to you from America?"
"Yes, he was to write to me directly he landed. He had instructions to
give me."
"Do you know of any Southampton friends of Colonel Rannock's?"
"Can't say I do. He has had yachting pals there sometimes in
summer, but there wouldn't be any of that sort in March."
"Mrs. Rannock is alarmed at being without letters from her son since
last March. Do you consider that an alarming circumstance?"
"Yes, Mr. Faunce, I do. My master was fond of his mother, in his way.
He didn't mind victimizing her to the extent of her last sovereign,
poor old lady, when he was hard pushed; but he was attached to her,
in his way. And I don't think he would have made her unhappy by not
writing to her, if it had been in his power to write. I give him that
much credit."
"Well, Chater, we shall have to set the cable at work, and find out
what we can at Dawson City. And now tell me your opinion of Mrs.
Randall, alias Delmaine. You describe her as a bit of a shrew; but do
you know if she was really attached to the Colonel?"
"I believe she worshipped him, in her way. I—well, a letter she wrote
him after their worst quarrel—the row that parted them for over two
years—forced itself on my attention—happening to take it up in a
casual way—and I must say it was a letter to melt a stone; but it
came just when the Colonel was going all he knew for Lady Perivale,
and he took no notice of it."
"And two years after he went back to her. That was weak, wasn't it?"
"I suppose it was, sir. But, after being much with a stuck-up person
like Lady Perivale, a spirited, free and easy creature like Kate
Delmaine would exercise a fascination."
"And you don't think she ever played him false? You don't think she
cared for the prize-fighter? What was his name, by-the-by; Bolisco,
wasn't it?"
"Yes, sir, Jim Bolisco. No, she never cared a straw for him—a great
ugly brute, with a cock-eye. She'd known him when she was a child
—for her people were very low—father kept a small public out
Battersea way; and it ain't easy for a woman to shake off that sort of
friend. Bolisco was took up by Sir Hubert Withernsea, and used to
dine at the Abbey Road sometimes, much to the Colonel's disgust.
No, I don't believe Kate ever had the slightest liking for that man; but
I sometimes used to fancy she was afraid of him."

CHAPTER XVI.
 "Later or sooner by a minute then,
So much for the untimeliness of death,—
And as regards the manner that offends,
That rude and rough, I count the same for gain—
Be the act harsh and quick!"
His interview with Chater left John Faunce troubled in mind, and
deeply meditative. Had there been a crime, or was the
disappearance of Colonel Rannock a fact easily accounted for in the
natural course of events? The mother's conviction that some evil had
befallen him was after all founded on an inadequate reason. If he
had gone to Klondyke, as he intended, the whole fabric of his life
would have been changed, and the man who while in the civilized
world corresponded regularly with his mother, might well forget his
filial duty, in the daily toil and hourly dangers, hopes, and
disappointments of the struggle for gold. It was difficult to judge a
man so placed by previous experience or everyday rules. The most
dutiful son might well leave home letters unwritten; or a letter, trusted
to a casual hand, might easily go astray.
Then there was always the possibility that he had changed his plans;
that he had stayed in New York or in San Francisco; that he had
chosen some other portion of the wild West for his hunting ground;
that he had spent the summer fishing in Canada, or the autumn
shooting in the Alleghanies; and, again, that his letters to England
had been lost in transit.
Faunce would not have been disposed to suspect foul play on so
slight a ground as the absence of news from the wanderer, but there
had been that in Mrs. Randall's manner and countenance which had
excited his darkest suspicions, and which had been the cause of his
undiminished interest in her proceedings.
If there had been a crime she knew of it, had been in it, perhaps. He
had watched her and studied her, but he had never questioned her.
The time was not ripe for questioning. He did not want to alarm her
by the lightest hint of his suspicions. She was too important a factor
in the mystery.
He called on her on the evening after his interview with Chater, and
persuaded her to go to a theatre with him. It was the first time he had
assumed the attitude of established friendship, but although she
seemed surprised at the invitation, she accepted it.
"I shall be glad to get out of this hole for a few hours," she said, with
an impatient sigh, as she pinned on her hat before the glass over the
mantelpiece, the little fur toque in which she had charmed the jury.
Faunce took her to see a musical comedy, a roaring farce from start
to finish, in which the most popular low comedian in London gave a
free rein to his eccentricities; and he watched his companion's face
from time to time while the auditorium rocked with laughter at the
wild fun. Not a smile illumined that gloomy countenance. He could
see that she was hardly conscious of the scene, at which she stared
with fixed melancholy eyes. Once she looked round at the people
near her, with a dazed expression, as if she wondered why they
were laughing.
It is recorded of the first Napoleon that he once sat through a broad
farce with an unchanged countenance; but then his shoulders bore
the burden of empire, the lives and fortunes of myriads.
The experience of this evening went far to confirm Faunce's ideas.
He took Mrs. Randall to an oyster shop, and gave her some supper,
and then put her into a cab and sent her back to Selburne Street.
Just at the last, when he had paid the cabman and given her the
man's ticket, her face lighted up for a moment with a forced smile.
"Thank you no end for a jolly evening," she said.
"I'm afraid it hasn't been very jolly for you, Mrs. Randall. You didn't
seem amused."
"Oh, I don't think I'm up to that sort of trash now. I had too much of it
when I was on the boards. And the more comic the show is, the
more I get thinking of other things."
"You shouldn't think too much; it'll spoil your beauty."
"Oh, that's gone," she said, "or, if it ain't, I don't care. I'd as leave be
a nigger as a 'has been,' any day. Good night. Come and see me
soon; and perhaps, if you take me to a tragedy next time, I may
laugh," she added.
"There's something bitter bad behind that," mused Faunce, as he
tramped across the bridge to Waterloo Station for the last Putney
train, "but, for all that, I can't believe she's a murderess."
Faunce spent the next morning in his den in Essex Street poring
over a book to which he had frequent recourse, and of which he was
justly proud, since it was the wife of his bosom who had compiled
this register of passing events for his study and use, a labour of love
on her part, achieved with abnormal slowness, and kept closely up to
date. The book was carried home to Putney on the first of every
month, and Mrs. Faunce's careful hands added such paragraphs
bearing on the scheme of the work, as she had cut out of the
newspapers during the previous four weeks.
It had pleased this good helpmeet to think that she was assisting her
husband in his professional labours, and the gruesome nature of her
researches had never troubled her.
Mrs. Faunce's book was a large folio bound in red levant leather, and
containing newspaper cuttings, pasted in by the lady's careful hands,
and indexed and classified with neatness and intelligence.
The volume was labelled "Not accounted for," and was a record of
exceeding ghastliness.
It contained the reports of coroners' inquests upon all manner of
mysterious deaths, the unexplained cases which might have been
murder, the "found drowned," the nameless corpses discovered in
empty houses, in lodging-house garrets, on desolate heaths and
waste places; a dismal calendar of tragic destinies, the record of
hard fate or of undiscovered crime.
Steadily, carefully, John Faunce searched the spacious pages where
the scraps of newspaper type stood out against a broad margin of
white paper. He began his scrutiny at the date on which Colonel
Rannock was said to have left London, and pursued it without finding
any fact worth his attention till he came to a paragraph dated May
30, and extracted from the Hants Mercury, a popular bi-weekly
newspaper, published in Southampton.
"Strange Discovery at Redbridge.—An inquest was held
yesterday afternoon at the Royal George, Redbridge, on the body of
a man, which had been found the previous day by some workmen
engaged on the repair of the road by the river. Their attention was
attracted by the proceedings of some gulls that were hovering and
screaming over a discarded boat that lay keel upwards in the slime
and weeds of the foreshore, at a spot where the tide must have
washed over it day by day. The timbers were so rotten that they
crumbled under the men's hands as they tried to lift the boat; but
worthless as it was, they found it carefully secured with two strong
stakes which had been thrust between the timbers at stern and bow,
and driven deep into the beach below the soft ooze and shifting mud
that moved with every tide.
"The men pulled up the stakes and turned the keel over, and, almost
buried in the mud, they found the body of a man which had evidently
been lying there for a long time, and of which even the clothing was
so decomposed as to be unrecognizable. The most careful scrutiny
failed to afford any indication of identity, except the name of a well-
known West End tailor on the trousers-buttons, and the fact that the
unknown had been tall and strongly built. The doctor's evidence
showed that the back of the skull had been fractured by some blunt
instrument, and by a single blow of extraordinary violence. Death
must have been almost instantaneous. The inquiry was adjourned in
the hope of further evidence transpiring."
Other notices followed at short intervals, but no further evidence had
"transpired." A verdict of murder by some person or persons
unknown had ended the inquiry.
"Curious," mused Faunce, after reading the report a second time,
and with profound attention, and then he went on with his book till he
came to the last extract from a recent paper, another unknown victim
of an unknown murderer, pasted on to the page a week ago. And of
all those unsavoury records there was only that one of the body
hidden under the discarded boat that engaged his attention.
He knew Redbridge, a village street with its back to the water, a few
scattered houses along the shore, a homely inn, a bridge, and for the
rest a swampy waste where the reeds grew tall and rank, and the
wild duck skimmed. He knew the solitude that could be found along
that shore, not a quarter of a mile from pleasant cottage houses, and
lamplit village shops, and the gossip and movement of the inn. A
likely spot for a murderer to hide his victim; and this was clearly a
case of murder, the stealthy murderer's sudden blow, creeping
noiselessly behind the doomed man's back, with the strong arm lifted
ready to strike.
That single blow of great violence indicated the murderer's strength.
But where and how had the blow been dealt, and what connection
could there be between Colonel Rannock's supposed departure from
Southampton, and the body found on the shore at Redbridge, four
miles away?
The question was one which John Faunce told himself that he had to
answer. The answer, when arrived at, might have no bearing on the
case in hand, but it had to be found. Faunce's science was an
inductive science, and he was always asking himself apparently
futile questions and working hard at the answers.

Mr. Faunce spent the evening in his snug little sitting-room at Putney,
and his sole recreation during those domestic hours was furnished
by Mrs. Randall's discarded blotting-book, which he had not
examined since he obtained it from the little servant in Selburne
Street.
With a clear table and a strong duplex lamp in front of him, Faunce
took the leaves of blotting-paper one by one, and held them between
his eyes and the light, while Mrs. Faunce, reading a novel in her
armchair by the fire, looked up at him every now and then with an
indulgent smile.
"At your old blotting-paper work again, Faunce," she said. "I don't
fancy you'll get much information out of that ragged stuff. There's too
much ink, and too many blots and splotches."
"It's not a very good specimen, Nancy; but I suppose I shall come to
something before I've done. It's finnicking work; but it almost always
pays."
"You're so persevering; and then you love your work."
"If I didn't I should never have stuck to it, Nancy. It's rather trying
work for any man that hasn't a heart like the nether millstone; and I'm
afraid I haven't."
Faunce had been at work nearly two hours, and his wife's interest in
a transcendently lovely heroine and a repulsively plain hero was
beginning to flag, before he came upon a blurred and broken line
that rewarded his patience.
In that splotched and besmeared labyrinth of lines the detective's
trained eye had discovered—
1. A date, March 27.
2. Two words, "meet me——"
3. A line of fragmentary syllables, "Sou—ton—est—o'clock."
4. Three words, "always loved you."
5. "Your—nd——"
6. "ig——"
This much, the inky impression of a heavy hand and a broad-nibbed
pen, Faunce was able to decipher upon two sheets of blotting-paper.
That last item, the letters "ig," with a flourish under the g, was the
most significant part of his discovery.
The letter had been signed with the lady's pet name, "Pig," and
Faunce told himself that to only one man would she have so signed
herself—the lover who had called her by that name at the Mecca
Hotel, and whose playful invention was doubtless responsible for the
endearing sobriquet.
"She told me she did not know whether he sailed from Southampton
or Liverpool," mused Faunce, "yet here, under my hand, is the
evidence that she asked him to meet her at Southampton West."
He went to Southampton next day, and called at the office of the
American Line. If Colonel Rannock had carried out his intention there
must be some record of his passage to New York.
There was such a record, and a startling one, for it proved that he
had not gone to America by the ship in which he meant to sail.
After some difficulty, and being referred from one clerk to another,
Faunce found the young man who had booked Colonel Rannock's
passage in the Boston on Friday, March 29, the evening before she
sailed.
"He came after seven o'clock, when the office was shut," said the
clerk. "I was at work here, and as he made a great point of it I
booked his berth for him. He suffered for having left it till the eleventh
hour, for there were only two berths vacant—the two worst on the
ship. He grumbled a good deal, but took one of them, paid the
passage money, and left his cabin trunk to be sent on board next
morning. And from that day to this we have never heard of him. He
gave us no address, but we have his trunk, and we hold the cash to
his credit, and I suppose he'll claim it from us sooner or later."
"Was he alone?"
"He was alone when he came into the office, but there was some
one waiting for him in a cab outside, and I believe the some one was
a lady. He spoke to her as he came in at the door, and I heard her
answer him. 'Don't be all night about it, Dick,' she said."
"Thank you," said Faunce. "His friends are getting anxious about
him, but, for all that, I dare say he's safe enough, and he'll call upon
you for that passage money before long."
"If he's above ground I should think he would," answered the clerk,
"but I must say it looks rummy that he hasn't claimed the cash and
the trunk before now," and Faunce left the office more and more
concerned about that corpse under the disused boat.
The steamer Boston was to leave the docks late on Saturday
afternoon. Why did Colonel Rannock go to Southampton on Friday,
and how did he propose to spend the intervening hours? More
questions for Faunce to answer.
A woman was with him at Southampton—a woman who had not
travelled with him from Waterloo, since he was alone when Chater
saw the evening express leave the platform. Who was the woman,
and what was her business on the scene? That she had addressed
him by his Christian name showed that she was not the casual
acquaintance of an idle hour.
Faunce believed that he had found the answer to this question in
Mrs. Randall's blotting-book. If the letter that had left its fragmentary
impression on the blotting-paper had been sent to Colonel Rannock,
a letter urging him to meet her at Southampton West, it would
account for his going there the night before the steamer left. From
those scattered words, and that signature, "Your fond Pig," Faunce
concluded that Kate Delmaine had written to the man she loved,
pleading for a parting interview, and that Rannock had responded to
her appeal.
There were other questions for Faunce to answer, and it was in the
quiet pursuit of knowledge that he took himself to the hotel which he
deemed the best in Southampton, engaged a bedroom, and ordered
a dinner in the coffee-room at the old-fashioned hour of six.
Before dining he called upon the coroner, who was also a well-
known family solicitor, and heard all that gentleman could tell him
about the inquest at Redbridge, which was no more than had been
recorded in the local newspaper.
Faunce having revealed himself in his professional capacity, the
coroner expressed his own opinion freely.
"I made up my mind that it was a murder case, and a bad one," he
said; "I've got the tailor's buttons in my criminal museum. Dash,
Savile Row. That stamps the victim as a stranger. We Southampton
people don't get our clothes in Savile Row."